X-plane - The past, present & future

[Humpty 752]

7 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

(Man...haven't been on a supersport in years...switched to streetfighter style bikes and never looked back...)

 

 

sorry for a bit of offtopic  of an offtopic for a moment.  

Which street fighter do you have ? 

 

Edited March 20, 2021 by HumptyDumpty

[mjrhealth 851]

Sigh, let the children play...

[jarmstro 2,405]

2 hours ago, mSparks said:

i would not give any of the flight sims a passing grade for their vegitation though, and in many ways I prefer HD_forests to what I've been seeing in msfs.

The best trees I've seen in X-Plane are by Pilot Plus in their airports. They really make a good difference.

[GoranM 3,809]

4 hours ago, mjrhealth said:

Sigh, let the children play...

Want some?  Because I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the show.

[mSparks 2,104]

4 hours ago, jarmstro said:

The best trees I've seen in X-Plane are by Pilot Plus in their airports. They really make a good difference.

Nice, I'll take a look.

But the fail mark I give for the trees and vegitation is much deeper than just looks, and not something that can be addressed by addons.

• No hit detection, clipping trees on final is a pretty common cause of accidents
• No reaction to the wind - trees are one of the best source of information for wind conditions near the ground
• no foliage/canopy - most of the earths land surface is covered in tree canopy, and xplane doesn't
• No interaction with the wind - there is a strong drop in windspeed in areas and runways sheltered by trees - xplane doesn't
• No debris - trees spit out lots of debris in windy conditions  

That's just a quick list, but I baulk when I hear Austin talking about wanting his sim "full of life", when the earths most ubiquitous life form has had less attention to detail over the last 30 years than the toilets of the 744.

[Murmur 3,971]

14 hours ago, RXP said:

credits: [SPECIAL NVIDIA PRIZE] Weekly Screenshot Challenge: Dream Vacation - Community / General Discussion - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

My thoughts (based on screenshots): 90% of MFS visual beauty is not due to streamed photoscenery, but to modern lighting, atmosphere, weather and ground features (trees, grass, etc.).

So when people say that it's unrealistic to expect XP12 to look like MFS, the implicit meaning seems to be that it's because LR, differently from MS, can't afford to have streaming scenery.

But IMO that's secondary: might as well be that LR has not enough human/economic resources to implement lighting/weather/ground assets at the level of MFS. But, if that would not be the case, it would make sense instead to expect XP12 to look as good as MFS.

Anyway only time will tell, and apparently those features listed above are exactly the priorities of LR for XP12.

 

[jarmstro 2,405]

Yes but LR need to be quick. Or things will have moved on beyond their reach I'm thinking. Time is of the essence.

[mSparks 2,104]

49 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

Yes but LR need to be quick.

I don't think they need to be quick.

They just need to do it before XP11 really is surpassed - which isn't going to be any time soon.

But if they dont even try or are trying and failing......

1 hour ago, Murmur said:

But IMO that's secondary

Pretty much my take, OSM already has building footprints and building class, and for the most part XP11 is actually still way ahead of anyone else in making use of them. For example they fixed this stuff:

https://www.gamesradar.com/microsoft-flight-simulator-has-a-ridiculously-tall-skyscraper-caused-by-a-single-typo/#:~:text=If you're flying around,for the silly-looking building.

3 or 4 years ago...

Edited March 20, 2021 by mSparks

[jarmstro 2,405]

51 minutes ago, mSparks said:

They just need to do it before XP11 really is surpassed - which isn't going to be any time soon.

But it has been surpassed in every way except, perhaps, one. In performance terms it has. In visual term it has unless you are prepared to fork out a small fortune and even then it's no match. And in the one area that every one crows on about it's catching up fast. I repeat. LR need to be quick imo. 
 

"Captains,

Our close friends at Aerosoft released their new CRJ for Asobo's MSFS this week- (congratulations, Hans!) and this has of course set off an expected flurry of anticipation, desire, speculation and unfortunately, conjecture, as to when more complex aircraft will be made available by other developers including PMDG.

In my (more-or-less) weekly updates, I try to give you a view that focuses on the product that is about to, or has just released, and then shift back to a higher-level view to give you a sense of the broader what is happening longer term in our development agenda. I think most of our customers track these updates easily enough, but occasionally it does sew some confusion because very little of what we share with you is linear. What I mean by "linear" is that we only very rarely tell you "we will do A, then B, then C."

There is a very specific reason for this: The workload of developers on the PMDG team can fluctuate quite dramatically throughout the development cycle, and thus we very frequently move tasks around on the calendar in order to maximize productivity and minimize down-time. If a project gets hung up due to a modeling problem, we won't let the downstream coders sit idle while the modeling problem gets resolved- we simply move them on to some other task in order to keep the general ship-of-progress moving in the right direction.

Likewise- sometimes we simply find that it is necessary to adjust the development schedule due to some external factor and this can open up a gap in the schedule that wasn't planned. We can insert a project, part of a project, an expansion package or some new feature into that down time, thus improving the overall quality of our product line.

Which brings me to the subject of MSFS.

PMDG Products for MSFS:
=====================
This week, with the flurry of excitement about the CRJ, we have gotten a bunch of folks asking "well, where is PMDG?"

We're right here.  

We are at work converting our entire product lineup into MSFS. It is taking some time, primarily because we have to completely reinvent our development process. It isn't simply a matter of adjusting a few lines of code and throwing a new model and texture exporter at the mix and calling it complete. We are building new development tools, shuffling around our entire development process, and turning our products upside down in order to make them as real and lustrous and lifelike as the new platform will allow. We aren't simply porting products in, using the same models and textures and animations. We are completely re-imagining them in order to leverage every ounce of what the new MSFS engine will give us. This means all-new models, all new texturing, new sound recordings (which are expensive and time consuming to make) entirely new lighting capabilities, in some cases requiring entirely new photo-surveys and the rebuilding of source material in order to bring you cockpits that don't look like we dragged an FSX cockpit across twenty years and stuffed it into a really nice rendering engine. We are bringing you incredible, new, feature-rich environments that really shine in the new MSFS platform.

For a while now I have been giving guidance on the release of PMDG 737NG3 as "very late 2021" and even hinted that it might drag into 1Q22. This guidance is a bit softer now- as we are really starting to see our work accelerate in MSFS. I'm going to hold off offering any projection right at this moment, as there are some things that have to happen before I become comfortable saying "yeah- we have cleared all of the hurdles." We have hit our share of knee-knockers, worked through them with some help from our friends at Aerosoft and Asobo- among others- and I fully expect we will hit a few more before we are finished. 

This is our first, full, jetliner product in the MSFS platform after all- so we don't entirely know what to expect from beginning to end. But things are beginning to accelerate nicely.

On the topic of MSFS and PMDG:

I have been mostly-mis-quoted ten thousand times this week as having said something along the lines of "the MSFS SDK isn't capable of supporting what we do" or "MSFS isn't capable of supporting what we do." I want to be very clear in stating that this new sim is highly dynamic and changing continually. What may have been true in June of 2020 is not necessarily true any longer. From the standpoint of development, we are not currently seeing any major limitations to prevent us from bringing our product catalog into MSFS.

To put that another way, quoting me as saying "MSFS isn't ready for PMDG" is a bit like someone in 1971 using a 1959 quote of the NASA administrator saying "We don't have the technology to land on the moon." Sure- that was true at the time it was uttered- but no longer a factor.  "

And you will find that all the better developers for X-Plane will be following suit unless LR quickly pull a rabbit out of the bag. Even IXEG.

Edited March 20, 2021 by jarmstro

[mSparks 2,104]

4 hours ago, jarmstro said:

But it has been surpassed in every way

Well, here's a few different ways its waiting to be surpassed, imho.

• Airports?  Nothing close
• Flight model? Almost flawless, best any competition can really hope for there is to equal it
• Depiction of items given on a VFR Map (Churches, VORs, NDBs, Powerlines, forests)? Nothing close 
• Ease of making aircraft?  Nothing close 
• Variety of aircraft supported?  Nothing close 
• SDK?  Nothing close (next closest isn't even v1 yet)
• IFR support?  Nothing close 
• 3rd party hardware support?  Nothing close 
• Number of aircraft nearly 100% replicas of the originals?   Nothing close 
• VR?  Nothing close 

And do you know what those things are? incredibly hard and excruciatingly time consuming to develop AND the essential items people look for from a flight simulator.

You know what isn't hard and excruciatingly time consuming? Copying and pasting a modern lighting model by someone who knows what they are doing, or moving art assets from one folder to another (which is why a typical studio the size of Laminar smash out two or three games a year).

4 hours ago, jarmstro said:

PMDG

We've already got people saying they prefer the 744 to their rendition, levelup is due "soon", but the leak is already looking pretty fine, I feel sorry for them putting all that resource into MSFS to likely be surpassed by freeware made by a couple hundred over excitable teens and several bored seasoned developers before they even launch.

Like you feel sorry for a wounded pigeon just before you run it over.

Edited March 20, 2021 by mSparks

[fogboundturtle 2,708]

• Airports?  Nothing close -- Really ? Have you look at the amount of addons airport you can have in MSFS now ?
• Flight model? Almost flawless, best any competition can really hope for there is to equal it  - I've yet to hear a real description of what makes XP11 flight dynamics better than MSFS. Please feel free to educate me 
• Depiction of items given on a VFR Map (Churches, VORs, NDBs, Powerlines, forests)? Nothing close  hmmm. There is tons of churches, vor, ndb and forest in MSFS. No powerlines. I'll give you that one.
• Ease of making aircraft?  Nothing close - hmm tons of freeware have been release in the past 7 months. I guess it can't be that hard.
• Variety of aircraft supported?  Nothing close  The amount of freeware and payware available right now does not support this claims
• SDK?  Nothing close (next closest isn't even v1 yet) PMDG and Aerosoft says there is nothing wrong with the SDK in it's current state. Yet you claim to know better than them ?
• IFR support?  Nothing close hmmm WT CJ4 would like to have a word with you.
• 3rd party hardware support?  Nothing close Please tell me which hardware is not supported in MSFS. I'll wait here.
• Number of aircraft nearly 100% replicas of the originals?   Nothing close hmmm...You mean in terms of simulation or visual representation ?
• VR?  Nothing close hmmm... I am pretty sure VR is working in MSFS.

I think it's time you review your list of complain on MSFS. I am not saying MSFS is perfect. It still have a huge list of things to fix but it's not scenery simulator everyone seems to label as. The Aerosoft CRJ is as good as any payware on Xp11. Much better than anything FF has release in the last few years. Yet the hate toward MSFS is still going strong. I've invested a significant amount in XP11. I love it but I am not blind to all the thing that is wrong with it. There is also a huge list of thing that XP11 could fix as well. Otherwise, the XP11 fans would not spend their time hanging in the MSFS section.  Guys. I know many of love XP11. It's a great simulator is just look very old even with a tons of addons.  This is just a reality. 

Edited March 21, 2021 by fogboundturtle

[Paraffin 2,197]

9 hours ago, mSparks said:

Pretty much my take, OSM already has building footprints and building class, and for the most part XP11 is actually still way ahead of anyone else in making use of them.

X-Plane still has a serious problem with that, and it's the lack of regionalized autogen. It's not terribly immersive to fly over the rest of the world outside of the USA and Europe, and see USA-style building shapes and colors everywhere. 

This is one area that MSFS is doing much better, even ignoring the streaming ortho terrain and areas with full photogrammetry coverage.

Load a flight in MSFS from Juan Santamaria airport in Costa Rica, and fly over the surrounding neighborhoods (all autogen). Most houses and commercial buildings have the distinctive variety of orange-colored rooftops you see in Latin America. You don't see actual tiles, it's not photogrammetry, just regionalized autogen texture coloring. I've flown over these areas in real life, and yeah, that's what it looks like. 

XP12 could offer regionalized autogen like this, along with better trees and more variety in ground texture. It's not prohibitive for local hard drive storage the way worldwide ortho scenery is. The Japan Pro scenery package is just 500 mb and it vastly improves the look of Japan, with all those distinctive blue tile roof colors.

A set of worldwide "plausible" autogen building variety might not take up more than maybe 10 gigs of extra storage, on top of the base sim and other default scenery. It's the kind of thing that should be easy to outsource too, since it's fairly basic 3D design work. 

 

Edited March 21, 2021 by Paraffin

[RXP 2,338]

52 minutes ago, fogboundturtle said:

I've yet to hear a real description of what makes XP11 flight dynamics better than MSFS. Please feel free to educate me 

[BUG/FEATURE] FS2020 is breaking the VR golden rule: don't move the camera, the user is - Bugs & Issues / Virtual Reality (VR) - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

Amazing aerodynamics, ad-nausea (literally) 😂

52 minutes ago, fogboundturtle said:

PMDG and Aerosoft says there is nothing wrong with the SDK in it's current state. Yet you claim to know better than them ?

I beg to differ: PMDG and Aerosoft are saying as long as Asobo developers are working daily with them, of course, there is nothing wrong with the SDK (how could they publicly say otherwise anyhow if they are working with them directly). And actually, there are many 3rd party vendors not having the same privilege and saying they can't make progress either. I'm glad PMDG and Aerosoft are getting so much help like this, but it doesn't mean there is no problem with the SDK.

52 minutes ago, fogboundturtle said:

 Please tell me which hardware is not supported in MSFS. I'll wait here.

Honeycomb Alpha and Bravo, because FS2020 carries the same bug already there in FS2004?
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/heading-increment-bug-10-degree-instead-of-1-explained/290173/2?u=cptlucky8

52 minutes ago, fogboundturtle said:

hmmm... I am pretty sure VR is working in MSFS.

Yes it is and I enjoy it a lot actually, but:
Discussion: February 4th, 2021 Development Update - Community / General Discussion - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

(a collection of a few of the problems I've reported)

Having said this, FS2020 is a good simulator too, for many of the reasons you've listed.

Edited March 21, 2021 by RXP

[fogboundturtle 2,708]

@RXP

My honeycomb Alpha yoke is actually working pretty darn good in MSFS. I really have a problem understanding your point. As far as 3rd party support. I think you and I had that discussion before. The way your product works requires an open system. MSFS is not. So I understand why you are not as happy about the SDK. You know I am customer of your product. I really love what you are doing but in life when something doesn't work, you have to adapt or your business will suffer. I am uncertain how you will be able to increase your market penetration if you keep hammering down that you need external DLL injection to make your product works. I think Asobo has been pretty clear about that. They will not allow it. 

[Anxu00 176]

On 3/19/2021 at 1:39 AM, Janov said:

I know there are some cheapskates out there that say "oh, just improve X-Plane 11"...hahaha. I know, you bought it already, wouldn´t it be nice if they just kept improving it ad infinitum and just live in their parent´s garage so you don´t have to shelve out 60$s every 4 years (thats 1,25$ every month). If that is too much to pay for a hobby, maybe take up train watching?

If the sim default has everything then 60$ is nothing.  It's the hundred if not thousand of bucks you then have to shell out for add-ons and then watch the bugs to jump.  To me this cycle is ridiculous.  If as you stated (and presumably you had the inside track) then XP12 is indeed worthy of a look.  However, I will wait and see if it truly will deliver or v13 or 14 anyone?  There are classes of simmers, those who built 100K custom cockpit and those who have limited budget.  I have been spending money on this sim thing for years and to be honest still wondering if the value I got out of the bucks is good.  Listen to your argument, you may as well tell the 3rd party dev to close shops.  These folks also do not have millions of development budget, if the way to make money is to introduce a new version with features that should have been in the previous version then force people to spend money to upgrade because of their existing "investment", at some point sensible simmer/hobbyist will quit the whole thing altogether.  I also found your suggestion of taking up train watching a bit rich.  There are all different type of simmers and not all of them has thousands of bucks to spend or have a bottom less wallet.